


Like the World Is Ending

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M, Porn Battle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-04
Updated: 2008-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-06 13:00:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"It's the hormones, she <em>knows</em> it's the hormones, but for a second she thinks her world is perfect, crystalline but unbreakable."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like the World Is Ending

He has taken to coming around to her place, late at night, something in his hands (Hershey's Kisses, what turns out to be absolutely vile non-alcoholic wine, a bag of still-warm doughnuts). He wakes her, more than once, from dreams where this pregnancy is over, for better or worse. Waking with the sound of the doorbell in her head, echoing like a headache, opening the door and staring at him - the blankness covering his face, looking up at her, up from his shoes with his hands behind his back. His face coming out of the shadows underneath her door, into the light. In her dreams he's always standing in darkness, off to the side, unready and unsure. And he never steps into the light. And maybe that's why, on the times that the dreams were full of blood and a pain that isn't any easier for being familiar to her, she pulls him close straight out of the doorway - by his lapels into her arms, pressing closer than her five-months-swollen belly will allow, shoving against him until it hurts. He whispers, drops the bag by his feet and kicks it through the doorway (donuts, then) then disappears his fingers into her hair, stroking, never pulling, always gentle, suggesting with the uneasy pat of his hands on the air around her head that she should rest on his chest. Those times end usually finish up in a fight - verbal, trying to throw words at him to see which ones will hurt the most and always holding back, never breaking through, never getting past his fragile need to love her whatever happens - unshattered glass that she can feel already under her feet; or physical, pushing at him until he pins her down in the bed and fucks her - brutality like electricity, crackling at the tips of his fingers.

Other times, there are no dreams at all and when the bell rings she takes heavy, insomniac steps to the door and doesn't say anything and doesn't smile and knows that he doesn't care. He will kiss her and to her it won't feel so different - his love is palpable, tender, undeniable. And always the same. She opens up, invites him, with her own hands between her legs - wet and luscious, and thirty seconds from the best orgasm she's ever had. But he just watches her, sitting on the side of the bed with his fingers stroking patterns on the inside of her right thigh, blackness filling up his eyes. And afterwards she laughs and kisses him and cuddles up close to him, making him wince away from her cold feet, high on exhaustion, raising an eyebrow at him when he tells her she should get some sleep. He cracks first, and sleep comes on her when she is lying beside him, weaving her fingers in and out of his curls.

Eventually she finds the key she gave him when she moved out and which he contrived to leave at her place, once when they were fighting with silence and he had believed he wouldn't need it. She presses it into his hand and tells him to use it.

"Surprise me," she says, "Come round. Just don't put any kind of meat products in my refrigerator, because I will throw up over them."

His smile is slow in coming, bitter like chocolate, and slick. His amusement makes his eyes shine and now she knows he'll bring pastrami and baloney and salami and refuse to eat anything but her homemade potato salad. She tugs on the end of his beard - pushed a little way over into exasperated, then kisses him. He laughs - a little huff of breath against her cheek. And it's the hormones, she _knows_ it's the hormones, but for a second she thinks her world is perfect, crystalline but unbreakable: his hands warm around her waist and the smell of him on her clothes. She hugs him, impulsively, like a little girl. He puts his arms around her and rocks, foot to foot, dancing with her in the sun.

She wakes up one morning, peaceful, if a little disorientated - missing his body in the bed. Last night was ... gentleness, a bag of cherries shared between them, and the kind of sex that sometimes works for both of them - kissing in the bed, touching themselves and not each other until he comes with his erection pressed tight against her thigh, so tired that she falls asleep less than five minutes afterwards, and doesn't dream about anything. She drifts, trying to hold on to the blankness of her sleep, eyes half closed. She doesn't hear his footsteps coming back from the bathroom, she doesn't register his fingertips stroking light touches across her thighs, uncurling through her pubic hair, pressing his thumb against her cunt. It takes the weight and shape of his head between her legs to rouse her, full of sleep to start but soon awake --

"Toby?"

"You were dreaming of someone else?" he says, lifting his head. The curls at one side of his head are flattened out and his eyebrows are crooked, he has both his arm curled around her legs. "I'm hurt, Andrea."

"I was thinking about housing benefit," she says, settling her hips down into the bed, stroking his shoulders. "Actually."

Toby raises his eyebrows, then presses a kiss to her thigh. "Wild."

"You have no idea."

He chuckles, then blows a breath across her. She closes her eyes, rubs up against him. His beard is coarse - recently trimmed, and she seeks out the friction, presses up against his chin.

"You want me to finish this?" he asks, his voice soft and heavy. He licks a pass across her, flicks the tip of his tongue over her clitoris.

"God," she says, "_Fuck_."

"Is as good as yes," he murmurs. He raises himself on his hands - ignoring the sounds of her frustration - and presses a kiss to her belly, rests his chin there. "Don't listen to this part. Your mom'll lay off the cursing just as soon as you get here. We have an agreement to that effect."

She laughs then, a peal into the air, and hits his head with the back of her hand.

"Pregnant and desperate over here," she says.

"You have the sweetest ways -- "

"_Toby!_"

"Yes, ma'am," he whispers, sinking down between her thighs again.

His hand is warm, gentle, smooth. He rubs the tips of two fingers over her clitoris before he starts anything, and when she looks down at him his face is unreadable - cast in both light and shadows, as though he is still counting the times and the ways she will let him make her come. She whispers his name and before the second syllable is out of her mouth his is pressed against her, open and clever, his tongue easing inside her, his teeth grazing her. He is slow but heavy, sucking her flesh into his mouth, raising the pressure up to the last point she thought she could bear and then pressing past it, rubbing his chin over her clit, his lips against hers, slipping two fingers inside her and curling up and out - making her cry out into the air. When she comes his hands shift to her hips, holding her fast, his thumbs over the bone as she rocks against his face. She feels light-headed, like she's drinking champagne at too high an altitude. She strokes his hair, his shoulders, his face. She passes her thumb over his bottom lip, wipes herself away. He stares at her, and does not smile. The world keeps turning, not yet shattered.


End file.
